I got this email from a friend of mine and boy, it made me feel old... and I'm only 33!!! I've changed a few things and added my thoughts... leave me your comments!! :-)
Adults used to tell me all about how hard things were when they were growing up... like walking twenty-five miles to school every morning....Uphill... Barefoot... BOTH ways… yadda, yadda, yadda.
I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way I was going to tell kids about how easy they've got it and how much they've grown... but now that I'm over the 30, I can't help but look around and notice all the changes and well... how much they've grown...
When I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!
There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen! Then you had to walk it all the way to the mailbox... then it would take like a week to get there!
Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, grandparents and the parents of all my friends also had permission to spank my butt!
There were no MP3's or iTunes! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the
record store and shoplift it yourself! But the best way was to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and mess it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and when we'd eject it, the tape would come undone or get twisted up... sometimes you'd get lucky and could use your pinky finger to roll it back up! Most of the time, it was so wadded up, you'd have to throw it away and BUY a new one!!
We didn't have fancy stuff like 'call waiting' or 'caller ID'! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal! And when the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could
be your school, your parents, your boss... you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances!
There weren't any cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your friends. OH MY GOODNESS !!! Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!!
We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We
had the Atari 2600 and Nintendo! With games like 'Space Invaders', 'Asteroids', 'Pong', you actually had to use your imagination!!! Those games just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! The best had to be Duck Hunt, though... I could play that for hours!!
We had to use a little book called a "TV Guide" to find out what was on! If you were super organized, you'd highlight and dogear the pages to make sure you didn't miss your favorite shows! Channel surfing?! Oh yeah... You had to get off your butt and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!! Thankfully remotes came along when we were in middle school and high school!!
And quite possibly the worst was that we could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning!! Do you hear what I'm saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons!
When I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!
There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen! Then you had to walk it all the way to the mailbox... then it would take like a week to get there!
Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, grandparents and the parents of all my friends also had permission to spank my butt!
There were no MP3's or iTunes! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the
record store and shoplift it yourself! But the best way was to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and mess it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and when we'd eject it, the tape would come undone or get twisted up... sometimes you'd get lucky and could use your pinky finger to roll it back up! Most of the time, it was so wadded up, you'd have to throw it away and BUY a new one!!
We didn't have fancy stuff like 'call waiting' or 'caller ID'! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal! And when the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could
be your school, your parents, your boss... you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances!
There weren't any cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your friends. OH MY GOODNESS !!! Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!!
We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We
had the Atari 2600 and Nintendo! With games like 'Space Invaders', 'Asteroids', 'Pong', you actually had to use your imagination!!! Those games just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! The best had to be Duck Hunt, though... I could play that for hours!!
We had to use a little book called a "TV Guide" to find out what was on! If you were super organized, you'd highlight and dogear the pages to make sure you didn't miss your favorite shows! Channel surfing?! Oh yeah... You had to get off your butt and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!! Thankfully remotes came along when we were in middle school and high school!!
And quite possibly the worst was that we could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning!! Do you hear what I'm saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons!
Our parents told us to stay outside and play, do chores or read! No electronics to soothe and comfort us!
Car seats - oh, please! Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on. If you were lucky like me, you got to stand in the front seat as your daddy took you to the store and you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if they had to stop suddenly!
See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or any time before!
Regards, The Over 30 Crowd
Regards, The Over 30 Crowd
That email definitely brought back memories!! I had to post it, my kids will never believe I had to wait a week to watch Tom & Jerry!!
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